


i imagine death so much it feels more like a memory

by WiseBlondeHunter



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, i love my angry blue daughter, i took a lot of creative liberties concerning nebula, we needed so much more of this friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 07:18:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18823804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WiseBlondeHunter/pseuds/WiseBlondeHunter
Summary: Nebula never had friends. She never played games. Now, she has both at the end of the world.





	i imagine death so much it feels more like a memory

**Author's Note:**

> wowie zowie my heart hurts. i just really love nebula and her character okay?

Almost all her life, Nebula had been alone. For years, she ate her meals alone, went on missions alone, slept in her quarters alone. She would adjust to her robotic limbs alone.

 

On one occasion, Gamora tried to slip into her room while Nebula was healing, the skin around her eye marred and irritated. She didn’t get two words out before Nebula picked up a dagger and threw it, missing her sister by an inch. Gamora turned and fled. Nebula sat on her bed by herself, her covers pooled around her legs, and cried silently.

 

They were nineteen at the time.

 

Many years later, Gamora tried to claim that all she wanted was a sister. Nebula couldn’t believe she’d tell such a bold-faced lie. All Gamora ever wanted was to win. There was no affection between them in Nebula’s mind.

 

It wasn’t until Gamora was gone that she realized that wasn’t true. She felt a grief that she’d only felt as a child when Thanos started replacing her body parts and drove a wedge between her and the only sister she’d ever known.

 

She wasn’t family or even a friend to the Guardians but watching them dissolve in front of her added to her pain. Thanos had succeeded. She just wished he had dissolved her, too.

 

But now she was no longer alone. She had a companion. A man. A fragile, heartbroken, weakened man, but a man nonetheless. He was some big, important figure back on Earth but Nebula didn’t care about his status. She cared about the stories he told her while they worked on the ruined ship, the only one they had at their disposal.

 

He had a fiancee back on Earth. A wonderful woman with beautiful eyes and a kind smile. She was sure there was more to that woman but those were the details he decided to share. She thought that was beautiful in its own way.

 

Nebula was sure that she had stopped seeing the beauty in the world years ago. She was surprised that she could find it now, in the darkest of times, with no hope on the horizon.

 

Tony liked to take her mind off of their circumstance, it seemed. They had finished one of their packages of food and he was fiddling with it, folding it up. She stood from where they were sitting and made her way across the ship to where they’d been working.

 

Resuming her work, she allowed her mind to wander. It mostly wandered to her family: Thanos and Gamora. She lamented Gamora’s death and burned with rage for Thanos. She imagined the best way to kill him, having long abandoned her plans for destroying Thanos’s body the way he destroyed hers. Now it was about his eradication rather than his pain.

 

“Hey,” Tony said, interrupting her thoughts, “C’mere, I wanna show you something.” Nebula hoped that it would be pertinent to their arrival on a planet where they would have access to supplies, food, and oxygen. However, when she walked over, all Tony showed her was a small silver triangle.

 

“That is what you’ve been fiddling with?” Nebula asked.

 

“Yeah. Let’s play.”

 

“‘Play?’” she echoed. Tony jerked his chin towards the table in the center of the ship.

 

“Go on the other side,” he said. Nebula faced him and mimicked him when he knelt down. He quickly explained the rules of what he called ‘paper football.’ She followed his instructions up until the moment he flicked the silver triangle towards her.

 

She grunted and swatted it out of the air on instinct. This happened several times; she just couldn’t stop her arm from flying up to catch it or swat at it. This game seemed pointless but Nebula wanted to win nonetheless. She always wanted to win.

 

“We’re tied up. Feel the tension?” Tony announced after they had each scored a few points. A tie. This could not end in a tie; Nebula had to win. Unfortunately, it wasn’t her turn and Tony did not make a habit of missing.

 

He flicked the triangle towards her and… missed. Missed by a wide margin. But Nebula wasn’t focused on that; she was focused on her chance to win. Tony set his fingers in position and waited for her to flick it. She examined the angle and, after a careful shot, made it right between his thumbs.

 

“And you’ve won.” Nebula leaned back. Her surprise didn’t show on her face but she felt it. That, and a sense of victory. She won. She never won. “Congratulations. Fair game,” Tony said, sticking his hand out. Nebula hesitated for a moment before grasping his hand with her own.

 

“You have fun?” Fun? Fun. Fun was a foreign concept. Nebula hadn’t had fun since she was a child, before Gamora and her started fighting each other. But… yes.

 

“It was fun,” Nebula said shortly. Tony grinned at her. She felt something stir in her chest. Something unfamiliar and strange but welcome.

 

For the next few days, they played paper football and talked. Tony talked anyways.

 

Tony talked extensively about his old teammates. Nebula did her best to remember their names. Clint. Bruce. Natasha. Thor. Steve. He talked about the people who helped him even he was “a bastard.” 

 

There was one person he never talked about though. Although Nebula knew it wasn’t a good idea to breach the subject, she couldn’t help but ask.

 

“That child,” she said as the ship drifted in the inky blackness of space, “Who was he?” Tony flinched and averted his gaze.

 

“He was… His name was Peter,” Tony replied. His voice was choked with such emotion that it pulled at Nebula’s heart.

 

“And he was your son?” Tony shook his head slowly. His face held an unimaginable pain.

 

“No. I wish… no, he wasn’t.” They didn’t say much of anything for hours after that. He did eventually turn the tables on her though. He started prying into her life, asking question after question. It was almost payback for asking about Peter. Nebula managed to stay silent until he asked about her sister.

 

“Who was that person Quill and Thanos talked about? Gamora?” Nebula felt a sharp pain in her chest.

 

“Gamora. My sister. Thanos killed her on Vormir to get the soul stone.” Tony leaned back on the small steps they were sitting on. In her peripheral vision, she could see him examining her.

 

“Were you close?”

 

“No,” she answered swiftly.

 

“You were never close?” Tony pressed. Nebula jerked her gaze up to meet his, her black eyes burning into his. She was prepared to refute his insinuation and tell him that he was wrong. But he wasn’t.

 

“We were at first,” she said. “Thanos stole me as an infant but Gamora was older when he took her. I told her how to survive. I helped her train. I snuck into her room at night while she was crying.” Reminiscing on the only thing Nebula had to good times in her life was bringing tears to her eyes.

 

She went on to explain that Thanos had stolen several children, Gamora being the last, and that they had come to regard each other as sisters before their sparring started. After that, however, their father made it clear that they were not to be close. They were to be nothing more than accomplices to each other in heinous crimes.

 

“I… I miss her,” Nebula admitted quietly. Tony reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. He didn’t say anything but he didn’t need to. She understood.

 

The days passed slowly. They traded stories with Nebula talking more than she ever had. They sat on the floor across from each other, having exhausted every possibility of starting the ship up. It reminded her of the times when Nebula and Gamora would throw blankets over their heads to create a small fort.

 

They would sit on Gamora’s large bed and talk about nothing and everything. They’d discuss training that day and excitedly whisper about moving up the ranks together. They would talk about what a loser Ronan was. They shared dreams of fighting together, side by side.

 

Tony was talking but Nebula was lost in her thoughts. She brought her knees up to her chest and propped her chin on them. It wasn’t until Tony reached forwards, sitting up on his knees, that Nebula noticed she was crying. She wasn’t sobbing or shaking. There was just a steady stream of tears falling down her cheeks. 

 

Tony tried to put his hands on her arms but she swatted him away. Nebula scrambled up and wiped furiously at her face. She hadn’t cried since her first body modification; that was the first time that Gamora had not comforted her while she was crying. She was seventeen.

 

Nebula strode to the other side of the ship and down to the cargo hold. There was nothing down there but unsalvagable wooden crates and a stash of broken weapons. She flung herself down onto the cold metal floor and drew her knees to her chest once more. 

 

How long she stayed down there, she couldn’t say. She drifted into a place between sleeping and waking, able to hear but unable to tell dream from reality. Gamora called her name. Quill shouted at her. Tony stomped down the steps. The cries of her younger, weaker siblings rang out in the small space.

 

When she emerged from her rest, she saw a packet of jerky sitting at her feet. Tony must have left it there for her. He took from their dwindling supplies to make her feel better. She couldn’t recall the last time she had been shown such kindness.

 

Nebula made her way back up to the cockpit to see Tony examining some wiring. He spoke and her heart jumped.

 

“I think we can get some power if we rewire this.”

 

The time for grief had passed. It was time to work.

 

\---

 

Her friend was dying. She was dying too.

 

Even if they had more food and water, the oxygen would be gone the next morning. Nebula could last longer without food and water than a human but not by much. She certainly couldn’t survive without oxygen. No one could.

 

Nebula sat at the table, staring at the dark surface, listening to Tony record a message for if their ship was found. He gave her the option to record her own message but she denied. She had no one to send a message to. Even if that fox and that tree were alive somewhere, they would have nothing to do with her.

 

Tony finished his message and slumped back against the wall. He was incredibly weak. His eyes were hollow and his cheeks were gaunt. Starvation and dehydration were taking hold. Apparently, according to Tony, humans could survive without food for weeks but not water. Water was essential to them.

 

“How long will you last after I’m gone?” he’d asked the night their food ran out. Nebula had paused to consider the answer.

 

“A week. Possibly two.” But that was incorrect. The grief would kill her much sooner than that.

 

Now that they were low on oxygen, she knew that they’d die at the same time. She never imagined her death to be like that. Shared with a friend rather than engaged with an enemy, alone and angry. She couldn’t speak the words aloud but she felt that it was a kindness to die with Tony.

 

Nebula walked over to Tony as he struggled to keep his eyes open. His body was trying to conserve energy and last as long as possible. She hauled him up and placed him in the pilot’s chair. Whether it was used by Rocket or Quill, she couldn’t remember. The only person to have sat in it in weeks, however, was Tony.

 

She reverently picked up his ruined helmet and placed it on the table. Someone someday would find that message and their bodies. Maybe they would piece together the story of what had taken place inside the ship but they would never capture the story of their lives, especially not Nebula.

 

_ “The best part of a story is the end.”  _

 

This was Nebula’s end. She sat down on the floor adjacent to Tony’s chair, leaning against the wall. She cast one last look up at him and placed her hand on his knee. It slowly slipped off as Nebula drifted into sleep, prepared for it to be the last time she ever closed her eyes.

 

It wasn’t until a bright, piercing light flared to life outside the ship that she realized this wasn’t the end after all. A woman, encased in light, was floating outside in the vacuum of space with a cocky smirk. Tony stirred and tried to stand upon her arrival.

 

No, Nebula thought, as she raced to let the stranger on board. This wasn’t the end of her story. This was the beginning of another chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! let me know what you think in the comments below!
> 
> and i also know that i made up a lot of memories and events for tony and nebula and her past but i just watched gotg vol 2 and i want more sister relationships. also endgame really skimped on tony and nebula's friendship and we all need more of that.


End file.
